Was frail Osama really a mastermind?

_, May 10, 2011 (Pakistan Observer): OBAMA administration has announced it saw no evidence as yet to prove that Pakistan’s political, military or intelligence leadership had knowledge about Osama’s presence in Abbottabad. A statement in this regard by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has further been explained by Senator John Kerry who said that there was no evidence that at the highest level, General Pasha, General Kayani, the President of Pakistan knew this.

However, these are not categorical statements because at the same time President Obama himself told the CBS show that OBL had a support network in Pakistan but it is not clear if the Pakistan Government was involved. As had been the case in the past, this time too mixed signals are emanating from Washington and no one knows what kind of story the US authorities would weave on the basis of ‘terabytes’ of information they claim to be in possession of following raid at the Abbottabad residence of Osama.

There are also reports that the US is asking for access to family members of the Al-Qaeda chief and pressing for investigations to ascertain about the support network. Therefore, Pakistan is not off-the-hook and proof or no proof, the episode would surely be misused by the United States to pressurize Islamabad to do more. But here we would like to raise another question, which, in our view, is very pertinent and that is whether OBL was really the mastermind. We say so because the last hide out in which he was living gave no resemblance of a headquarters of the world’s most dreaded organization.

There was no sophisticated equipment or technology, no modern communication network and not even extraordinary personal security for head of the organization. Videos of OBL also show that he was frail, ill and totally detached from ground realities. Otherwise too, a person living in a small dark room for five longs years is not expected to be in effective control of an organization that has forced even the super power to have sleepless nights.

At some point of time in the past, OBL might have been an effective and relevant figure but not at the time when he was raided by the United States. In fact, there are reasons to believe that like so-called weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussain, the United States created the bogey of Osama to advance its regional and global agenda and it would continue to do so for sometime in future on the basis of ‘information’ it laid hands on in Abbottabad.